Just over the brow of this hill, against the banks of the Missouri, is Fort Benton, the head of steamboat navigation on the Missouri and the world's innermost port. Below this point, a shelf in the river prevented further passage. Along Front Street is a mile-and-a-half levee, and from 1860 until the railroad arrived in 1887, most of the freight for the northwestern U.S. and Canada was unloaded there. Along the Missouri, people who came off the decks of steamboats began their lives in Montana.